My GDN impressions are disappearing!

Hi! I'm new here - been using Adwords for awhile and just started with GDN. I posted 3 ad groups on Monday separated by targeting type (Keywords, Interests and Topics), which were all approved, and on Tuesday saw about 43k impressions total among all 3 groups, with most in the Topics group. Later in the day I added a fourth group of broader keywords to try to get more impressions, but got very few. I also raised the bid significantly during the day on Tuesday.

Wednesday when I entered, it seemed that the campaign had almost completely stopped. My impressions over the course of the day were only 6k (after adding a fourth ad group and increasing my bids!) and today I am seeing the status for everything under Topics (my most successful campaign so far) has status "Managed" and the following message when I mouse over:

Showing ads right now?

No

This ad group isn't currently available for serving. Please try again later.

I checked the boards for an answer, and read something about taking out mobile ads as a placement option, which I attempted to do, but I'm not sure if it worked (or if this is really the problem?)

I also contacted my local Google support via chat and they told me that I should try to put more options of sizes of my ads (I currently have 300x250 and 728x90) but this doesn't explain why my numbers would have decreased so drastically overnight.

Does anybody have any insights of what could have caused this change and how I can get this campaign off the ground quickly?

Re: My GDN impressions are disappearing!

While I agree with Moshe on this, I would like to elaborate on a few points:

1. You are using just 2 ad size variations where as AdWords allows upto 15 ad sizes for GDN. You should try and utilize all or at least a good number of size variations as it will help you widen your visibility. Plus, it also ensures that the placements on GDN that do not support the 2 ad types will at least show your ads of other size variations thereby helping with maintaining visibility

2. If you are using "Managed Placements' for your GDN campaign, try and increase the number of placements in the targeting as the targeting is too narrow at the moment. Or stop Managed Placements and try a broader targeting method, maybe Keyword Contextual or Interest based Targeting

3. Lastly, Bids and Budgets play a huge role in your visibility. Try and increase your bids for your adgroups but also give the campaign enough budget to be able to cope with the high bids

Hope this Helps!

CheersShashank

3.

Cheers,Shashank Singh, AdWords Rising Star | Did you find any helpful responses or answers to your query? If yes, please hit "Like" or "Accept as Solution"

Re: My GDN impressions are disappearing!

While I agree with Moshe on this, I would like to elaborate on a few points:

1. You are using just 2 ad size variations where as AdWords allows upto 15 ad sizes for GDN. You should try and utilize all or at least a good number of size variations as it will help you widen your visibility. Plus, it also ensures that the placements on GDN that do not support the 2 ad types will at least show your ads of other size variations thereby helping with maintaining visibility

2. If you are using "Managed Placements' for your GDN campaign, try and increase the number of placements in the targeting as the targeting is too narrow at the moment. Or stop Managed Placements and try a broader targeting method, maybe Keyword Contextual or Interest based Targeting

3. Lastly, Bids and Budgets play a huge role in your visibility. Try and increase your bids for your adgroups but also give the campaign enough budget to be able to cope with the high bids

Hope this Helps!

CheersShashank

3.

Cheers,Shashank Singh, AdWords Rising Star | Did you find any helpful responses or answers to your query? If yes, please hit "Like" or "Accept as Solution"

Re: My GDN impressions are disappearing!

In addition to the great suggestions above, check to see if you accidentally added another targeting to the same adgroup. For instance, the adgroup where you are targeting by topics and which has been bringing you the most impressions, check if you happened to add another targeting method like keywords, placements, demography etc.?

When you have one targeting method set for an adgroup, adding another to the same confines the targets and ads trigger only on the placements which become eligible for your combination. For instance, an adroup which has both topics and keywords as targets will trigger ads when placements become eligible for both keyword and topic.

Re: My GDN impressions are disappearing!

Hey there! thanks so much for the response. Just a few follow-up questions/points:

1) How many sizes are necessary? Will I need to create banners in all sizes? Does anyone know which sizes are most common, or is there a way to see this somewhere within Adwords?

2) I am not using managed placements, all of my ad groups are Keyword, Interest or Topic based. (With one group for each type of targeting). My targets are fairly specific, as I work within a very particular segment, but it still doesn't explain why I could get so many impressions one day and then overnight it became too specific.

3) I switched to a CPC bid and raised it quite a bit, which seems to have solved the problem of impressions, but I am worried because my conversion rate is low (even compared to earlier this week) and I want to optimize for conversions. Should I let it run on CPC for awhile and then switch back?

Re: My GDN impressions are disappearing!

Hey Shashank, thanks for the elaboration! I responded to each of Moshe's points above but basically, I think it was an issue of bid? I was using CPA and when I switched to CPC I got more impressions, but my conversion rate dropped way down. I care much more about conversions than clicks. Do you think it's worth it to test a higher CPA? Or let the CPC run for awhile and adjust along the way?